Welcome to our exchanges at Goldman Sachs markets update for February 7th.

Every week we sit down with leaders across the firm to get their quick take on five numbers they're watching in the markets.

Today we're joined by Sarah

Kiranen of our Global Markets Division. Sarah welcome. Thank you. Thanks for

having me. So what's your focus here at Goldman and who are your main clients?

So I'm chief operating officer of our commodities business here at Goldman and so the

commodities business is interesting because we deal with investors

across the spectrum but we also have a very heavy client base of corporate clients.

So Sarah what's the big number you've been looking at?

Fourteen dollars which is the amount that the price of Brent crude oil

has fallen since we all started talking about the coronavirus

in mid-January.

That represents a 15% drop in the price of Brent,

as opposed to equities and credit both roughly unchanged.

It makes sense that oil has fallen more than those asset classes as it's a global

commodity where the demand impact is going to be a direct input to the price

and not have to be filtered through the eventual

earnings impact or a macro policy response down the road. The questions investors

are focused on are twofold. How much demand is being destroyed and how long will it be destroyed for and neither

one's easy to answer. So given the huge range of outcomes and the

uncertainty, investors are really staying on the sidelines and waiting to

know more about the virus's scale and scope before getting back into the market.

...